What the fusion breakthrough means to clean energy: Absolutely nothing.

The scientists are calling it a milepost, not a breakthrough

Image above: US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm [right] offers her views on the importance of achieving fusion ignition during an experiment at the  National Ignition Facility which is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. URL:https://www.llnl.gov/news/shot-ages-fusion-ignition-breakthrough-hailed-one-most-impressive-scientific-feats-21st 

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By REG CROWDER 

A lot of attention was given to the recent fusion energy “breakthrough” achieved by scientists at  the  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And I have no quarrel with that. It WAS  a big deal within the world of science. It was claimed by many to be the first time that fusion initiated in a laboratory produced more energy than it consumed. In a very narrow sense, that may be true.

I quickly became weary of the nonsense from the non-scientists who spoke of a world in which fusion provides unlimited cheap zero-emission energy. Cheap? Just to get this far the taxpayers had to pay for a facility full of lasers the size of a sports stadium. 

But then I drilled down into the numbers and became utterly disgusted. The experiment delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy to a pea-sized target. The scientists are of the opinion that their data shows that the fusion ignition then produced 3.15 megajules of energy, or more than 50% in excess of what hit the target. However, that’s not the whole story. While it is probably true that 2.05 megajules struck the target, the total consumption of energy by all of the lasers used in the experiment was about 322 megajules. In other words the experiment demonstrated that the fusion ignition generated less than 1% of the energy required to create it.

I am not impressed. And I’m not alone. 

Dr. David A. Hammer, a professor of nuclear energy engineering at Cornell University, offered some clarity on the matter of what is going on here, sharing his thoughts with the science and technology journal, Nature:

“It’s a big milestone, but [the US National Ignition Facility at the  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] is not a fusion-energy device. NIF was not designed to be efficient. It was designed to be the biggest laser we could possibly build to give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme.”

Similarly, to their great credit, the scientists doing the work are not peddling nonsense about what this “breakthrough” really means. Most of them use the word “milestone” to describe the successful fusion ignition, rather than “breakthrough.”

Dr. Kimberly S. Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, warned of the daunting engineering challenges that would have to be overcome to commercialize fusion energy: “... Probably with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.” 

My translation: In 2050 will I be able to charge my phone with commercial electricity produced by nuclear fusion? Probably not.

— Reg Crowder Twitter: @RegCrowder Mastodon:  reg_crowder@mastodon.world